Black Dog Days Trilogy

I went to a writing workshop last week, it was super cool, I learned a lot from some amazing authors and I feel more determined than ever. Part of the writing there was to write something from the perspective of someone who has depression. I wrote 3 pieces! all based off the phrase "black dog days" which is what I think of when I think of a day that is particularly difficult because of depression.

here they are!

1.

Wendy Wonder

Black dog days under a [blackhole sun]

And wonder. Not the good kind.

Wonder where my light has gone,

Wonder about where my world

And all it’s hopes and possibilities have gone

Wonder how much farther down I will go, before

I try again.

Wonder why it didn’t work the first time, who called 911, how it took so long but Ii survived?

Wonder why ther’es so many questions and no answers,

Wonder why all these doctors and nurses look at me

That way.

Will anyone tell me how to get out of this suffocating pain???

I used to breathe, deeply, fully, not it feels like all I can do is

Hold it.

And hope the exhale doesn’t come.

I wonder.

Just tell me it will be ok and leave me alone.

2.

In the Dark

The Black Dog Days feel like walking away from a car wreck: You are alive, but you are also kind of fucked. Maybe life shouldn’t be this way, maybe life shouldn’t be like this. Maye life shouldn’t be. You wonder about all the days you felt so great, deconstruct them, catalogue their anatomy, like some extinct species barely remembered. A decisive action would be nice. A swift and just redemptive swing of some mystical scepter that would shatter all the lies and fear. You catch yourself wishing for unicorn tears, for myths and fairy rhymes. You are trapped here in the dark, and no one is coming to save you. The person who put you here is you. Maybe darkness can match the inside of your eyes and you won’t be able to tell the difference between waking and sleeping, living and dying.

3.

Dualities

Black and Tan like the new moon, subtle and slow

Dancing in slow motion like you’ve had one too many

And gently, like a fog, leading blindly to certain doom

Without sight or speech or illusions of certainty

Dog and Pony shows that distract us from

The real, from the sick and sad desert of the

Darkest moon shining down

The struggle of light and dark and human souls

Places our every morning and every evening on the horizon

Days and Nights an obvious nod to the routine,

The discipline of which we are not a part

And when we descend, the nights and days are what drive us

Into the floorboards of our own disgrace and destruction.

Music Snippet

I was listening to a podcast in which Henry Rollins stated that one of his personal disciplines and things that brings him joy is to listen to music. He listens to 3 albums minimum daily. I also recently found the joy of BandCamp App. I've been listening to a lot of music in this way and find it really great to share this tip. Listening to music in album format is a lost art. We do a lot of singles, playlists, dependence on the radio. But a album says something. It gives a narrative. It has a flow. Sometimes it is disappointing, because it is two great singles and a bunch of crap.

Listen to more albums!

Glorious!

In the soul...

I recently officiated a wedding for dear friends, and they unloaded the most beautiful and strong vows I've ever heard in a wedding.

The groom shared a story about giving away the key to his heart to the Bride. The metaphor really struck me the way he said it:

"a man’s soul is like a building full of rooms. And that through his life he fills those rooms with everything that makes him who he is. Some of the rooms he lets anyone into, He shows them around and shares that part of his soul with them. Other rooms are more private, and are only shown to the few people he is closest to. And some rooms he never shares with anyone. Rooms with secrets and truths so private, that the door is permanently locked." 

This metaphor holds up over, and it beautiful. The messy part is of course that there are some rooms that no one wants to go into. Dangerous and scary rooms. Rooms where we store the stuff no one wants. I'm not even talking about misbehavin': The other day I was in the hospital and Bob the Eucharistic Minister walked by. I shouted a greeting and asked how he was doing. He shared with me about his sense of self care and that he was feeling good when he was able to work out every day.

He elaborated, and told me something profound: "When you visit with people who are in pain and who are suffering, you carry that in your soul, and you need to care for yourself."

And so, mashing these two metaphors together, there is a room in your soul for suffering. Some people have filled up the room, and there's nowhere to even sit down. Some people have rarely even walked through their barren room for suffering. The point is, everyone has a room for suffering and needs to go to it, and we no only carry the suffering of our own in the room, but the suffering of others, and in order to share suffering, someone must open the door of suffering to you.

It is a room to room transfer, and there is a sense of mutuality and vulnerability in the transfer. When spouses suffer, the transfer is almost instant. When family and friends suffer, so do we. The Apostle Paul instructs the church in Rome to "Mourn with those who mourn" and in this sense, share suffering. The Church ought to behave like a family.

The quest of the pastoral companion and fellow traveler is to know when and where to extend this bridge of vulnerability into the room of suffering. We are meant to seek one another out in this way. And we need to watch over our own rooms, our own soul, in order tomake sure there is always room for the suffering of others, as well as our own.

Poem: 18 Years

Siezed and frozen, not in carbonite, 

Kids are now voting age, advanced stage,

And I sit alone in this cage,

A body of rage,immobile, 

inconceivable, irrevocable,

Or so I have resigned myself

This crooked life cannot be made straight. And no one can feel this awful weight.

I hate it. This life.

They say he teaches truth and changes lives, proclaims righteousness and even-gasp-heals.

I've heard it before but still I will rise, 

not fully of course, 

and I will make the long journey down these stairs, through my door

Out into the streets, the whispers and stares, 

They never cease. Like I did anything to deserve this disease, 

and I have almost forgotten my longing to just get this off of me, please, God!

Stiff and still and stalwart, steadily I shuffle on Shabbat, 

and find a seat, near the door, first one I see, 

the ache gets worse when I do anything. 

All that effort and I just want to go home, and lie down.

I'm here but I've forgotten how to hope.

Suddenly I feel a different stare, sublime and subtle somehow, but He is looking right at me. He takes a knee, reaches out and touches me

And whispers gently

"You are free." 

I, it...feels...

...weightless, effortless, lifting up my spirit.

I. Stand. Up.

Addendum:

I can't even hear the noise that follows. I can stand and dance and feel like God hasn't given up on me.

Don't heal on the sabbath? After 18 years, Sabbath rest has finally come to me, praise God(thank you, Jesus) I am free.

Luke 13:10-17

An Update of Sorts: San Francisco

Greetings Friends,

Here is an update on our lives. It is wordy. Enjoy!

Settling in: Moving to San Francisco from Riverside has not been an un-bumpy transition. We are loving some of the features of the city, but it is a city and thus we are shifting to a new way of life. Everything is different. There is no complaining, but differences require adjustments. Like with laundry. We fortunately live 4 blocks from a laundromat and we have figured out a system. We looked like a couple of noobs the first time. Just going to the store is a different experience, and getting anywhere takes about 3 times as long as we would expect. The conveniences of modern life are totally different here.

We are loving the city. Our first weekend here we were invited to a Free Guacamole Competition, that featured over 30 amazing Guacs as well as unlimited chips and beer. The whole thing was free! It seemed wild to us, but this city has so much to offer. Our neighborhood is like a little village, with so many great aspects. Our apartment is less than 400 sq ft, and so we have done some tricky business fitting some stuff in and also getting rid of stuff. We have also been able to get acquainted with a faith community at 1st Mennonite Church. They are very warm, and very mennonite, and I even met a coworker that goes there. It will be a good place to grow and find comfort in our new digs, but nothing seems like it will ever be as rich as Madison St.

At Work: I've been loving work // the program. I feel totally at home and adept in the fast pace of the hospital. It's a lot of new things coming at us fast (me and the other 14 Residents) And there is a lot of explaining to nurses that "I'm new", so that's why I don't know yada yada. UCSF is a very sharp, professional, and yet quite welcoming place. We were just listed as the the #5 Hospital in the country by US and World Report, beating out UCLA for #1 in California for the first time in a few years (So I'm told...I love identifying with the culture here in the hospital/school)

My days are spent splitting time between visiting patients in the mornings, and going to classes in the afternoons, as well as working through educational goals with my supervisor and cohort of fellow residents. I also am on call an average of one night a week which means a 24 hour shift in the hospital (there's a special sleeping room JUST for the Chaplain On Call) and I have a lot of written assignments that I can catch up on when I'm not being paged. As chaplains we are assigned to specific floors, but when on call, I cover everything from Labor & Delivery to Geriatrics. The diversity and opportunities abound in this huge and advanced teaching hospital!

Cristin is busied with connecting to the health system here as well as building into friendships in the city. It has not been easy, but we have found a good Physical Therapist and many supportive voices as we find health care providers, and connect with our community and friends.

We continue to welcome your prayers and uplifting for Cristin's health, our sense of stability, Matthew's work in the hospital, and for the many kind and hurting souls of the city.

A Chaplain's Work

The lifeblood of a Chaplain's work consists three things: Communication, Presence and Impression. This is a subtle and artful thing. I don't consider myself to be good at these, but I feel like they are things that I don't think about anymore. There is a flow to the hospital and it has little to do with social order or small talk. It is a strange configuration of bodies in the hospital, between the many interdisciplinary groups and the many many patients. It's often too much for me to handle, and a Chaplain is often in between these, both the teammate and the advocate. And so, how are are and come across is the essence of what we do. A favorite quote from a predecessor chaplain is "Don't just do something, stand there!" Truly a strong reflection on the role of the chaplain.

These essential manners are intangible, temporary, fleeting. The Chaplain is a demonstration of what the Bible means when it reminds us that life is but a vapor, a temporary breath. We arrive, we assess, we intervene, and we leave. With this is a model, what is the long term impact of the chaplain? We often don't even see the impact we make. We take what we see and we try and see it with the person who is in it. And so it is difficult to find what the long term sense of this work is.

Someone told me to consider how I want the world to look in 1, 5, 10 and 30 years. This is the scope of your life. I have decided that the short answer of all of this is Unity. I want to see unity increase and commonality decrease. The sameness of life is such a critical error. Diversity of viewpoint is the only way to step into the river of humanity. We settle for commonality and mistake it for unity. It is simply not the case. This principle of unity vs commonality is what has driven people apart through history, it is the tribal and deferential nature of humans in small groups. It is our duty to overcome it.

We have taken pains in our historical habit to commemorate this tension, and often towards the common. Why are their statues of people, anyway? We are living in the blink of an eye. Jason Steele put it best when he wrote "In 100 million years, the universe will descend into entropy and not even Shakespeare or Coca Cola will be remembered, so what chance do you have?" The spirit of chaplaincy is to live to be forgotten, to live into our core experience and so to embrace the ethereal other. We are called to be people who remember, and conversely live into this forever forward posture. We must sail to our destination, burn the ships and begin anew. One hospital room at a time.

Ink and Magic

Lines on a page that hold together all the rage and harmonize the sharpest tones and reveal the future from the perspectives of our own experience. Richard Rohr said “Love is saying yes to what is”, and that desert father never had truth engraved into his dermas, needing hours of self-appointed pain to commemorate the pain of self-inflicted life.

The ancient and lost arts flow wildly through the afflictions, and remind me of the inglorious why. Suffering and dying well, aspiration to live to be forgotten, and hope to find that work is prayer, all hold sway in calculating this enigma that is chaplaincy. If it ain’t the years but the mileage, like old Indie said, then the stars for navigating are the milestones on this old Roman road. And those are carved in permanence.

So I pray for a good harvest, and I weed the garden, and hopefully discover that Clive was right and they’re the same thing, and even though there’s nothing new under the sun, the sun rises and the rains fall on us all. The words of the Barbarian ring most true to me lately, “For us there is no spring, just the wind that smells fresh, before the storm.” 

Postmodern Voyager, Overly Dramatic At Times

Seeking, Experiencing, Overcoming,

I struggle and stride amidst the tide
And wade through streams and swamps
Born on a rainy day, perpetual mist, personal thrift, unexpected downshifts
Went to the Desert to be born, emergence baked in harshest rays, 
Testing on the desolate, dying earth.
Memories and footsteps traced backward through the desert sands, 
The terrains and frames of mind and time
Like scenes and lines on a silver screen
Or wild American landscapes, strange
Trails made by unknown hands, The mysterious and sublime
A scholar and a gentleman,
Like Sir Isaac Lime, distilling all things
In the Laboratory of contemplation 
Decanting droplets of visions and wisdoms,
New Postulations, expanding as the sky
Assembling a microcosmic engine of grace,
To traverse the secular and sacred now through the meaningless beyond.

A collage of some art.

A Writing Exercise

I just took this free Psychology of Writing test, and it was informative.

http://www.utpsyc.org/TATintro/

While I won't share my results, it is the first creative writing I've done in a while, and I had myself a little laugh while rereading it.

There was a long a solemn hum in the air of the lab that November day, and no one could tell why. The crickets and grasshoppers were all hibernating, but somewhere, someone knew something was about to change forever.

Bernadette and Geraldine spent many long days and nights in the lab. They had been college roommates, Biology majors, and had grown so close through the years, but today after 10 long years on the project was going to be different.

Geraldine knew she had to share the news personally: She was going to be stepping down. She did not have her heart in it. The Science just didn't have the same electricity and excitement that it once did. She knew she had to take her folk tambourine ensemble on the road and she already had a gig booked that night in Fairfax. And so as her passions shifted, she knew she had to make amends to her longtime partner in science. 

Bernadette drew out the samples as she had every day for the last year. There was nothing out of the ordinary to her until Geraldine entered the room. The two ladies looked each other up and down. Flashbacks abounded, back to the first day of orientation at Fairmont college. Geraldine in her pleated skirt and khaki windbreaker, looking like Henry Jones without the hat, contrasted by Bernadette's full hippie regalia, including Rainbow short shorts, and a Hemp halter-top. Yet somehow the two were instant friends. 

"Bernadette," Geraldine faltered, she knew friendship would not strike twice, as lightning had their electricity experiment in their senior year. Bernadette took a long breath, and closed her eyes, searching for the words to say. The two were connected like siamese twins after a surgery. "Let's go get a drink." She dropped her samples to the ground and shook off her lab coat. 

The two walked through the doors of O'Malley's bar 20 minutes later, demanding old republic stouts and lighting up red apple cigarettes. "I'm gonna miss you, girl." Bernadette said casually, raising a glass to toast. Geraldine felt immediate relief, knowing that the two would be back at O'Malley's this time in two weeks when she returned from her eastern tour. Friendship may not strike often, but it does not disappear.